People wonder aloud about whether I am an okay mother. That is obviously painful because it’s so important to me. It’s hard to hear that people think I’m not a capable mother and a good person, that they just think I’m nuts.

The more you are talked about the less powerful you are.

I do not like broccoli. And I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I’m President of the United States and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli.

The outside perception and inside perception of Microsoft are so different. The view of Microsoft inside Microsoft is always kind of an underdog thing.

According to Ethiopian custom, parents wait to name a baby because children often die in the first weeks of life.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

You learn that there’s no right way to do it, no wrong way to do it. It’s just what you feel comfortable with, to trust that, and don’t let anybody box you in to a certain style of parenting or make you feel a certain way about what your kids do.

Not always actions show the man; we find who does a kindness is not therefore kind.

If you change and adapt your persona, you are seen as inauthentic; if you stay the angry young man, you fade from attention or seem tiresome.

If my critics saw me walking over the Thames they would say it was because I couldn’t swim.

My aim is to make the poor look rich and the rich look poor.

The image is one thing and the human being is another. It’s very hard to live up to an image, put it that way.

I never had a mother. I suppose a mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.

My son’s full real name is Duncan Zowie Haywood. As a toddler, he was called by his second name Zowie. But it was such an identifiable name during the Seventies that if I called him loudly in public places, everyone would turn to stare, so I started calling him Joey to take the pressure off.

No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.

When I’m around the kids I feel like I act the most grown-up just because you’re supposed to. And I say things, like every other day, that remind me of my own parents.

He knows my limitations and where I’m a good wife and a good mom.

I go to sleep thinking about my kids being spoiled and I wake up thinking about it.

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

It’s very difficult for the American people to believe that our government, one of the richest on Earth, is also one of the stingiest on Earth.

I was ill, and everyone could see it but me.

Somewhere it is written that parents who are critical of other people’s children and publicly admit they can do better are asking for it.

The long time to come when I shall not exist has more effect on me than this short present time, which nevertheless seems endless.

How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact!

It would have been difficult to have an ugly daughter.

If you raise your children to feel that they can accomplish any goal or task they decide upon, you will have succeeded as a parent and you will have given your children the greatest of all blessings.

Ironically, parenting is a shame and judgment minefield precisely because most of us are wading through uncertainty and self-doubt when it comes to raising our children.

You definitely want your kids to understand their heritage, but I don’t want my kids to just focus on being black. They are people. I don’t want them to judge other people or to be judged. I want them to be good people, so good people will treat them accordingly. I preach that to my kids and everything else falls into place.

I wouldn’t put myself forward to do a film like ‚Changeling‘ if I thought I couldn’t pull people into a story because of all the other ways people see me.

Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.

My momma didn’t clean up floors so I could be a thug… so I could wear my pants down.

No matter how prepared you think you are for the death of a loved one, it still comes as a shock, and it still hurts very deeply.

For people who may think they know, or have snippets of who I am, you can attack that person. That’s part of being a public figure.

If your mom cries a lot, you probably cry a lot. It’s what you learn.

The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly.

I’ve always felt heroic about my life… As a child, I remember little girls in the playground moaning about how boys could do more than they could. I didn’t think that was the case at all. My parents didn’t treat me as a girl.

With the amount of money I have, it’s difficult raising children the way I was raised.

You must be afraid, my son. That is how one becomes an honest citizen.

Every man, and for stronger reasons, every artist, wants to be recognized. So do I.

Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter.

In Italy they take cheap cloth and make it look expensive, but I take expensive cloth and make it look cheap. They just don’t understand.

I’m not a parenting expert. In fact, I’m not sure that I even believe in the idea of ‚parenting experts.‘ I’m an engaged, imperfect parent and a passionate researcher. I’m an experienced mapmaker and a stumbling traveler. Like many of you, parenting is by far my boldest and most daring adventure.

More than anything else, I want the folks back at home to think right of me.

Homework’s hard. Especially math. My kids joke with me. They tell me they have homework. I say, ‚Okay.‘ And then I sit down and they say, ‚It’s math.‘ ‚No! Not math! English, history, anything!‘

I just want to make sure when I have kids, I can spend time with them. That’s the whole point.

I think Mick Jagger would be astounded and amazed if he realized that to many people he is not a sex symbol, but a mother image.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

I don’t have this feeling that 70 is really old.

If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.

I was a grade B housewife, maybe a B minus. But when I got time to write, I would be unable to finish a sentence. I had anxiety attacks. Partly it was a way of personifying the situation because I couldn’t breathe. I was surrounded by people and by duties. I was a housewife and the children’s mother, and I was judged on how I performed those roles.

We do not see people as they are, but as they appear to us. And these appearances are usually misleading.

Giving responsibility is the key to success with boys, especially with the rowdiest and most difficult boys.

My mother was a full-time mother. She didn’t have much of her own career, her own life, her own experiences… everything was for her children. I will never be as good a mother as she was. She was just grace incarnate. She was the most generous, loving – she’s better than me.

The narrow bandwidth of TV has made us think that we are stupider than we are.

A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain.

As a rule, men worry more about what they can’t see than about what they can.

A lot of people think I’m a comedian.

I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.

A reader can never tell if it’s a real thimble or an imaginary thimble, because by the time you’re reading it, they’re the same. It’s a thimble. It’s in the book.

It is always good to know which ideas cannot be checked directly, but it is not necessary to remove them all. It is not true that we can pursue science completely by using only those concepts which are directly subject to experiment.